Wales is ‘in the dark’ over Brexit, says Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood

Leanne Wood is calling for much greater clarity about the process and substance of leaving the European Union.

Writing for the Times Redbox, the Plaid Cymru leader accuses UK government ministers of being full of ‘nothing but contradictory statements, with comments from one minister ridiculed by another’.

While accepting the result of the referendum, which in Wales saw just over 52 per cent of people voting for Brexit, she argued that this did not amount to a vote for hard Brexit.

Concluding that the UK was ‘still in the dark’ over what Brexit will mean, four months after the referendum, she argued that while the High Court ruling giving parliament a formal role in triggering Article 50 must be accepted, this ‘should not be seen as an opportunity to overturn the result’.

She instead argued that it provided an important opportunity for the 48 per cent of voters who backed Remain ‘to have an input’ and pursue a soft Brexit.

Her article comes as Plaid Cymru today launch a campaign in both Westminster and Cardiff Bay to hold ministers in both governments to account over what Brexit will mean and how it will work for Wales.

This in turn comes amid growing signs that at least one, if not more, of the devolved governments are due to get behind the effort to uphold the decision in the Supreme Court to allow parliament a vote on when to trigger Article 50.

Pressed about the issue on the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme yesterday, Gina Miller, the claimant who has led the legal campaign, commented:

“We are expecting a number of governments to join us. But their case will be different to ours. They will be talking about their own particular interests.”

Mick

Well well well, so Leanne Wood can’t even pick up the phone to have a document land on her desk, one standard piece of EU literature detailing perfectly how a nation can leave the EU. She obviously only gets her information from newspapers, blogs and even – ooo – comment sections. And you know what we’re like! Can’t agree on a thing.

And if sweet little Leanne can’t fathom that diplomacy means a bit of hush for your wheeling and dealing over Brexit, she has no business being in the job. Unless, of course, she puts more skill into crude propagandising. (Then, that’s a standard way to get her kind of job.)

Mike Stallard

I have watched the Andrew Marr clip. Nigel Farage was wrong. He insisted that Brexit meant leaving the EEA/Single Market/common market. If we do that, we can kiss goodbye to our trade with Europe. The International Standards Organisation, for a start, will not allow free trade with the continent. Separate arrangements will have to be made wit each European government for each item of trade. It just will not work and certainly such a massive task will not be operating within the two years allowed by Article 50. People who invoke the name of the WTO have not done their homework. It will not meet the need and negotiations will be necessary – and those take, literally, years while the economy tanks. We must stay in the EEA for the time being and preferably join EFTA like Norway and Iceland. Immigration is not then a problem because there is a well tried opt-out and, anyway, a lot of our immigration does not come from Europe. Remember the Africans and Afghans clambering onto those leaky rafts? Or all those people from the subcontinent come over to join their families?

Mick

You talk like it’s all a one-way affair, common with Remainers. I’ve rad the Institute For Government Brexit Brief and it turns out that the EU will also need to rework their treaty obligations in regards World Trade Organisation agreements.

Also, with the UK having potential access to a way huger free market than the rigged Single one – piles of foreign trade offers stack on government desks – the EU will just as much need us as we would like to trade with them.

We are a huge import market from the EU. And as the EU stagnates and fragments, EU nations would be idiotic to prioritise Jen Claude Junker’s unhinged lust for revenge above economy-stabilising deals with us.

Jimmy Glesga

GodfreyR

On Mike Stallard points. Trade is between businesses and consumers not countries. Businesses will produce goods to the standards required in their target markets and manage costs so that prices are competitive inclusive of tariffs and expectations over exchange rates. Quality is also an important aspect of overseas sales.

Businesses from all over the world have traded into the EU with little problems for years. And so will British companies, post-Brexit.